Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Sunday, September 9, 2007

Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of Pope St. Pius X, condemning modernism. The holy pope called modernism the "synthesis of all heresies." Every Catholic should read what he had to say. St. Pius X was a prophet as well as a pope, as can be seen in the following words when he describes Catholic modernists who deceive as wolves in sheep's clothing:

And here we have already some of the artifices employed by Modernists to exploit their wares. What efforts do they not make to win new recruits! They seize upon professorships in the seminaries and universities, and gradually make of them chairs of pestilence. In sermons from the pulpit they disseminate their doctrines, although possibly in utterances which are veiled. In congresses they express their teachings more openly. In their social gatherings they introduce them and commend them to others. Under their own names and under pseudonyms they publish numbers of books, newspapers, reviews, and sometimes one and the same writer adopts a variety of pseudonyms to trap the incautious reader into believing in a multitude of Modernist writers. In short, with feverish activity they leave nothing untried in act, speech, and writing. And with what result? We have to deplore the spectacle of many young men, once full of promise and capable of rendering great services to the Church, now gone astray. It is also a subject of grief to Us that many others who, while they certainly do not go so far as the former, have yet been so infected by breathing a poisoned atmosphere, as to think, speak, and write with a degree of laxity which ill becomes a Catholic. They are to be found among the laity, and in the ranks of the clergy, and they are not wanting even in the last place where one might expect to meet them, in religious communities If they treat of biblical questions, it is upon Modernist principles; if they write history, they carefully, and with ill-concealed satisfaction, drag into the light, on the plea of telling the whole truth, everything that appears to cast a stain upon the Church. Under the sway of certain a priori conceptions they destroy as far as they can the pious traditions of the people, and bring into disrespect certain relics highly venerable from their antiquity. They are possessed by the empty desire of having their names upon the lips of the public, and they know they would never succeed in this were they to say only what has always been said by all men. Meanwhile it may be that they have persuaded themselves that in all this they are really serving God and the Church. In reality they only offend both, less perhaps by their works in themselves than by the spirit in which they write, and by the encouragement they thus give to the aims of the Modernists.

In the Motu proprio, Sacrorum Antistitum of September, 1910 Pope St. Pius mentions the conspiracies of "secret associations." Many very sophisticated Catholics ridicule any mention of secret societies and conspiracy theories. However, any one with more than a cursory knowledge of history knows that there have been conspiracies which changed the course of history. The Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence had quite a conspiracy going, as King George III was to discover to his dismay. To quote from an article about Pascendi:

In dealing with historical conspiracies, there are two errors. One is the simplistic error of reducing everything to mere conspiracies. The second is to also deny,a priori, the possibility of any conspiracies. By his very nature, man tends to associate with those who think like him or share the same interests or goals, as the old Latin adage says, similis simili gaudet(like rejoices in like). This natural tendency often gives rise to groups, organizations or movements of people who gather not only to discuss their interests but to coordinate their efforts for victory. History has seen all kinds of conspiracies, cabals, political machinations, military plots, theologians’ factions, and so forth. Thus, speaking of a modernist conspiracy whose goal is to change the Church is hardly absurd. Saint Pius X himself speaks of a “secret society.”Share

CHICAGO, IL - SEPTEMBER 8, 2007 - We usually do not celebrate the birthday of the saints, but rather their "birthday to heaven," that is, the anniversary of their death, considered as the beginning of their blessed life with God. Nevertheless, there are two exceptions, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist, since we commemorate not only their birthday to heaven, but also their nativity, their coming to this earth.

The nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which we celebrate today was well prepared by God from the very beginning of sacred history. Already in the Garden of Eden, God promised our first parents, Adam and Eve, to send them a Savior through the providential Woman, whose "seed will crush the head (power) of the serpent" (Gen. 3:5). In the protoevangelium, “the first Gospel” of Genesis 3:15, we see the promise of the new Adam, Christ, who will be the "seed" of the new Eve, Mary.

But Genesis chapter 28 also provides another prophecy about this new Eve. Remember the vision Jacob had of a ladder uniting heaven and earth? On Jacob’s ladder, the Angels were descending and ascending to God, and the place was called "the house of God" and the "gate of heaven."

The fathers of the Church applied Jacob's vision to the Blessed Virgin Mary, for in her this was fully realized both physically and spiritually. Through Mary, as though by a ladder, the Son of God came down from heaven to earth. Mary, by carrying the Son of God in her womb for nine months, became indeed "the house of God." And giving birth to the Son of God, Mary opened for us "the gates of heaven."

One hundred years ago today, Pope Pius X, whose feast we celebrated on this past Monday, issued an encyclical entitled: PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS. This encyclical condemned the heresy of Modernism. Why did Pope St. Pius X choose the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary to issue a condemnation of Modernism?

Well if we review the 15 promises of the Rosary we will recall that the 3rd promise is: the Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell; it will destroy vice, decrease sin and defeat heresy. We will, furthermore, recall the prayer: “Thou alone, Mary, hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world”?

If you read Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi, you will learn that Modernism is the sum of all heresies. It would by idyllic to imagine a time in which there would be no heresies, no individual persons who place their personal opinions over the Church’s authority and Magisterium. However, the fact that heresies exist does not at all mean that this antiphon with which the Church honors the Blessed Virgin Mary is not perfectly and literally true.

For there cannot be a time, this side of the Last Judgment, in which heresies will not exist. St. Paul stated this very explicitly in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For there must be also heresies: that they also, who are approved, may be made manifest among you” (11:19). At all times the Blessed Virgin Mary destroys all heresies in the whole world in those who are truly and profoundly devoted to her.

St. Pius X very well explains the meaning of this expression in his encyclical of 1904 for the 50th anniversary of the definition of the Immaculate Conception. He there explains that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception contains in germ all Catholic doctrine and in particular the supernatural order of grace, which man in his proud rebellion refuses to accept.

Devotion to the Immaculate Mother of God is consequently the only means to preserve the submission to God and to the Church’s authority that are the protection against all heresy and every error in the Faith.

If people believe and profess that in the first moment of her conception the Virgin Mary was free from all stain, they must also admit the existence of original sin, the redemption of mankind by Christ, the Gospel, the Church, and even the law of suffering. These truths will root up and destroy any kind of rationalism and materialism that exists.…

This doctrine compels us to recognize that power of the Church which demands intellectual as well as voluntary submission. Because of this intellectual submission the Christian people sing to the Mother of God: “Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is no original stain in thee.” For this reason the Church rightly attributes the destruction of all heresies in the whole world to the venerable Virgin alone. (Ad Diem Illum, §14)Contact: Canons Regular of St John Cantiushttp://www.sanctamissa.org IL, USRev. Scott Haynes - webmaster, 312-243 7373Keywords: LiturgyCategory: Liturgy

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